I did something very radical in 2010 - I voted Lib Dem! Seriously, I think labour desperately need someone like Tony Blair. Like him or not (I have always been a bit 50/50 about him) he did broaden labours appeal beyond the hard core and attract floating, middle of the road, voters.

His stance on Brexit is bang on, Labour needs, to borrow and paraphrase a saying of Harold Wilson, to become a crusade on Brexit, or it is nothing. If sufficient Tory waverers were attracted by a new, centrist leader, the loons could be stopped.

New Labour had, in my opinion positives and negatives, these are my opinions, feel free to correct and/or criticise

IRAQ
no halt to privatisation, Pfi
Continued being in thrall to markets and city traders
wasted money on crackpot schemes like casinos, ID cards, car scrappage, Prescotts mad plan to deal with a housing shortage by knocking down houses

Still, a poor Labour government is massively better than a good Tory one. I do think though that with the fact that they did have a serious majority in 1997 they could have been a bit more bold with reversing Tory fuck ups, even the Scum and Express had changed sides, and I thought there was public appetite for more change with the Tories at very low ebb.

Was listening to Alistair Campbell on the radio on the way home. He made a very good point in that a divided cabinet (or party) cannot hope to offer any sort of vision to the country, and without that you've no hope of bringing people together.

As for Labour and 1997, the country wasn't in a bad way - it was doing alright despite the government being effectively useless since 1994. Labour had a long time to set themselves out as a government in waiting, caught hold of technological and societical changes, looked modern, and knew there was an appetite for massive investment in healthcare and education.

I think I said before that possibly the one service of direct benefit that Jeremy Corbyn has done for the Labour Party as its leader has been permanently to change the direction of travel of the party away from compliance with an austerity agenda.

But there is one other thing. He has made me appreciate Tony Blair and his strategy more than ever - and I was someone who did not support Blair as leader and was fairly trenchantly critical of him while he was.

Of course Jeremy hasn't done this single-handedly. A good many of the Momentum subscribing fuckwits make you appreciate and even long for the Blair years utterly effortlessly just by opening their gobs.

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Has there been a response to Boris' speech yesterday? Or is the leadership still burying it's head in the sand and hoping it all just goes away so they can talk about what they want to, rather than what they have to?

We are the angry mob, we read the papers every day.
We like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we're all so easily swayed.

Has there been a response to Boris' speech yesterday? Or is the leadership still burying it's head in the sand and hoping it all just goes away so they can talk about what they want to, rather than what they have to?

The breakdown of power sharing in NI was the big story of the day but Jez's long held interest for peace in Ireland seems to have taken a long break as well. His old friend Gerry Adams said last week that a Corbyn premiership "would be good for the people of Britain." Make of that what you will.

A bitter Labour row has broken out after Jeremy Corbyn’s allies tried to cancel the election for the chair of the party’s national policy-making body, HuffPost has learned.

Just minutes before the party’s National Policy Forum (NPF) was due to gather in Leeds on Saturday morning, an emergency meeting of the ruling National Executive Committee officers’ group decided to block the vote.

Veteran activist Ann Black – who lost the backing of Momentum this month - had been on course to defeat union rep Andi Fox in a hastily-arranged election to chair the hugely important policy forum, which sets Labour policy for future general elections.